The ultimate hotel experience … with Barco Clickshare

What do you expect of a good hotel, during your holidays? A clean room, a good bed and a great breakfast, of course. For those who want that little bit extra: Barco can help!

The world’s largest hotel chains have called in our help to create amazing projection mappings, to equip their theaters with the best digital cinema projectors or to install ultra-bright projectors in the event rooms …

From Abu-Dhabi to Qatar and Ibiza 
A party, an opening or a conference: a spectacular video mapping will amaze the audience at any occasion or celebration. When the global Starwood Hotels group – with big-name brands like The Sheraton, Aloft, W hotels and Le Méridien – organized its annual meeting in 2013, it asked Belgian companies Beam-Inc and Jorizon to design an impressive video mapping to project onto the hotel façade. Four HDX-W18 projectors brought the images to life. In Doha, Qatar, six of the same projectors helped create a spectacular nine-minute 3D video mapping show on the opening of the Souq Waqif five-star hotels. Maybe even more unique: in Ibiza, our HDF-W26 projectors created an unbelievable projection mapping onto the swimming pool of the Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel.

The Hilton chain 
In northern Europe, we found Barco projectors at two hotels of the prestigious Hilton chain. For example, the 530m³ conference hall at the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica, Hilton’s first and only hotel in Iceland, features a three-chip RLM-W8 projector. At the ‘DoubleTree’ Hilton hotel in Poland, a Barco F32 WUXGA projector ensures crisp, high-contrast projection in the 300-person ballroom. In addition, Barco also supplied a DP4K-23B digital cinema projector for use in the hotel’s theater. And did you read our most recent hotel-related issue of the Barco newsroom? One of our top-range DP4K-32Bx projectors has just found itself a very stylish home in London, at the 188-seat cinema theater of the spanking-new Ham Yard boutique hotel.

Barco for business 
More than providing solutions related to entertainment, our ClickShare meeting roomsolution is gaining inroads in the hospitality sector. The Marriott Hotel in München and East Hotel Hamburg in Germany, for example, have recently converted their existing meeting rooms into truly collaborative working spaces, featuring ClickShare in a starring role. Watch the interview with the Marriott München Management and keep an eye on our reference story section, as we’ll be publishing the East Hotel Hamburg story soon!

Can technology save the meeting

ast time, we touched upon the productivity issues in today’s meeting culture and the pressure from management to treat collaboration as a competitive asset.

In Barco’s ‘Meeting Room of the Future’ survey, held last summer, 8 out of 10 business leaders indicated that technology could help provide a solution to the quest for greater productivity, and (wireless) presentation tools were considered the No. 1 priority when updating meeting rooms. You can consult the full results of the survey on SlideShare and YouTube.Link below -

Survey on SlideShare

Improving decision-making

Investments in visualization and presentation technology are usually made with one goal in mind: improved decision-making. In fact, 70% of the people we surveyed cite improved decision-making as the top benefit of data visualization tools.

But there are many aspects to be kept in mind when choosing the right technology for your organization, including: technology requirements, implementation needs, managing user expectations, and proving return on investment. Such a decision is never taken lightly – not even by those of us who go for consumer-like presentation and collaboration gadgets or other budget-friendly, functionality-light tools.

6 challenging dimensions

In my opinion, there are six key elements to consider when you are weighing your options for having technology take you to the next level of collaboration:

ease of use
open standards
technology
enterprise integration
security
and, of course, the user of the solution.
Six dimensions – and each of them creates unique challenges.

Video conferencing leaves participants baffled and irked

An internet based survey conducted to evaluate the efficacy of video conferencing and online meeting room tools sparked a discussion that invariably garnered attention of the millions of people. A prime reason here was the flow, which wasn’t very positive; especially when it came down to the suitability of meeting room tools as the constructors of the new age conference rooms, a particular section was clearly not amused. Now the question is why…why are people annoyed with a technology that is simply outstanding. An online meeting room tool is the fastest possible way to connect with a group and engage in discussions that lead to fruitful conclusions. Without actually having to meet in a room, the participants of a meeting are able to collaborate, all thanks to these video conferencing gadgets and presentation systems. The costs are significantly lower and meeting time is unimaginably condensed; then why the chaos…?
Well, a closer look at the remarks clears the air. Assertions like ‘my system administrator is a compulsory attachment with the presentation system’ or ‘it is a wire fiddle’ and ‘more wires less talks’ shed light upon the actual reasons. Users of such online meeting room tools aren’t particularly against the technology; rather their dismay is indicative of the issues associated with the average quality products available in this category.

Explore the options

A presentation and collaboration tool that is not wireless is actually a set of entangled cables, each demanding to be adjusted in a highly structured manner. Professional expertise of a system administrator with high end knowledge in this domain is thus essential. Moreover, with these systems, even if one participant is not able to figure out the connections, the entire group could face connectivity issues. The troubles of such wired presentation systems that claim to be the best in India are simply many. Every meeting mandates an engaging session with the instruction manual and thus while the administrator is terribly occupied getting it all right, decisions and discussions related to business matters are coerced to assume a back seat.

From wire to wireless

Embrace the technology right to experience the true benefits – give Clickshare’s one click meeting room tool a shot. This wireless presentation and collaboration system comes with a large meeting room screen that not only seamlessly connects, but also imparts a feel of a physical get-together. Barco Clickshare is minus cables and thus while discussions via this large scale video wall collaboration tool are convenient, setting up is even easier! With just a few clicks, the participants can connect and thanks to the video and audio quality, the members of the group can engage in the most crucial discussions that seamlessly lead to vital solutions.

Vote for Barco’s 4 InAVation Awards 2014 finalists

Today, InAVate magazine revealed the jury’s choice of nominees for the InAVation Awards 2014. Barco is proud to have 4 products in the running for an award. Help us win all 4 by voting now!

Each year, European trade magazine InAVate honors outstanding companies and products in the professional audiovisual industry with an award. On 5 February 2014, the second day of the AV trade show ISE, the awards will be distributed during a ceremony in Amsterdam. Now is the time to vote. Go to this page and make sure to vote in every category for a valid entry. Encourage your customers, partners and peers to also cast their vote before 26 January 2014.

These are the nominated Barco products:

‘Most InAVative Conferencing or Collaboration Product’

The CSM Base Unit for the standard meeting room, recently added to the ClickShare wireless collaboration and presentation system portfolio.

‘Most InAVative Display Product’

LiveDots’ V14m lightweight outdoor transparent LED display for the rental and staging market.